1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to telephone communication systems, and more particularly to integrated messaging and voice free telephony.
2. Background Art
In telephone communication there are times at which people desire to talk normally into the telephone mouthpiece but are inhibited to do so because they. will disturb other people who are nearby.
With presently available technology, when a telephone call needs to be made, the speaker has to either disturb others or leave the room and handle the call in a more private setting.
The present invention provides a method and apparatus that allows people to carry on unobtrusive phone conversations in business or other settings where it is either not possible or impolite to talk. Some examples would be in business meetings, large conference rooms, game stadiums, airplanes and the like. The present invention is particularly significant with the use of cellular telephones which may be operated in any setting.
The present invention also allows a hearing impaired or deaf person to communicate using the telephone. The apparatus can be used either in isolation or as a service to this community. The apparatus allows both calls to be made as well as received. Currently, this community uses a relay service to communicate with others. This type of service is done with human intervention and is slow and rather expensive. Our apparatus allows the hearing impaired person more control over the call and reduces his long term cost of using relay services.
Some examples of presently available background technology include "text to speech" (TTS) systems that convert text to sound such as IBM's "Eloquent TTS", IBM's "Virtual Voices", and Bell Laboratories "Text to Speech Synthesis". This technology is presently used to read text passages aloud. For example, using this technology, a person can listen to his e-mail while he is driving. The text to speech conversion can be done in real time in software with presently available computer CPUs such as the 166 MHz Pentium processors.
Another technology referred to as "speech recognition" is also presently available. IBM's "ViaVoice" is an example of this technology. Speech recognition systems technology convert spoken words into text.